01/20/2025:
One Year of Success:

It has officially been one year since I opened my business as of today, January 20th, 2025.
One entire year of... honest to god CHAOS. One entire year of ups, downs, happiness,
stress, anxiety, euphoria, tragedy, and triumph.

I started on a little kiosk in a mall,
stationed between a Mom and Pop bakery and a Bath and Body Works. Further down the
hall was an MMA studio for children, and a massage parlor. The absolute perfect location
for a kiosk, in all honesty... Especially considering what I was selling.
For the prior year, I had been working two jobs in order to afford merchandise for
my store; as a shoe salesman in Dillard's, and a game store in the mall.
Every paycheck, I would spend a good chunk of it on different items I thought would
sell well in my own store. I learned what I could about retail and I put together
a business plan to present to the mall manager. I gathered distributors, and various
avenues of obtaining merchanside... which was not a lot at first.

In November of 2023, I finally felt confident enough to reach out to the mall manager
and get the ball rolling on my business. She was a driven women that seemed impressed
by the effort I had put into everything so far, so she gave me a wonderful opportunity;
She gave me a kiosk with a low rent in order to test the waters and see if I truly had
what it took. Apparently, I was the first Mom and Pop to ever bring her a detailed
business plan. So the next months consisted of putting together the last bits of
everything I would need come opening day.

I officially opened January of 2024. On the 20th, I spent my last few hours as an
employee of the video game store in the mall, and opened my store later in the day.
My selection was very sparse... I had journals, bookmarks, enamel pins, keychains,
a small wallet selection, stationary, earrings, and chopsticks. Barely anything at all.
I got my signs printed for cheap through another business stationed in the mall.


I was barely even a business... but I was a business. A dream I had been striving for
since I was 5 years old... accomplished. At 34 years old, I was a business owner, finally.
I watched my father my entire life build, maintain, sell, and rebuild businesses...
and I had finally made it on my own. My dream came true.

On February 17th and 18th, I attended my first anime convention as a vendor!
Anime Sunika, for it's very first year. It was a mix between an anime convention and
a Japanese food festival and was honestly like a dream!


The convention was a magical experience for me; this was the moment I genuinely felt
all of my success. It slammed into me that I had actually built a business, and I
spent the entire convention on cloud 9. I even ran across a cosplayer dressed as
Tiana from The Princess and the Frog... Tiana and her story of tragedy and triumph
was a huge motivator for me throughout my adult life, and seeing her with her
"Man Catching Beignets" felt like a sign from the spirits. I was on the right path.

By March, I had expanded into a second kiosk, stationed directly next to the first,
with a full glass countertop and a minifridge. By that point, I was selling
Buldak Ramen, Lego Minifigurines... I had a huge sticker center that housed stickers
from 16 different shows/movies. I had huge out of print Lego sets, Pokemon cards,
Dragonshield card sleeves, purses... My wallet selection ballooned out to 30
different styles.. I started selling shoe charms, anime plushies, and expanded
wherever I noticed a trend... I had customers all day long.




At this point, I was VERY QUICKLY outgrowing my kiosk, and the other store owners
were beginning to take notice. Unfortunately, this is when thing started becoming
a bit more difficult. Due to conflicts within the ecosystem of the mall, I decided
to speak to the mall manager about moving into an actual storefront location.
She was estatic about the idea, and we immediately ran through all the build out
the new location would be, and signed the paperwork. According to the contract,
repairs and construction would be done by April, and my move-in date should be
around the first week of April. The space needed extensive work in order to be ready
for move-in, as the prior tenant had not informed management of a water leak in the
back storage room until there was a huge mold problem. The deal also involved the
replacement of the light fixtures, the removal of the electric cables left hanging
from the prior tenant, and the overhaul of the bathroom and back areas.




I had plans to bring in a piece of wood reclaimed from a barn that was 190 years old
at the time of demolition. The wood was going to be sanded down, stained, and
turned into the main countertop. I had displays selected and ready to order
and several friends had offered to donate their time and effort into helping me
get the shop set up and ready for the big opening. Unfortunately, this never came to
fruition. Struggles within the construction crew resulted in my move in date being
pushed back to the end of May. I remained optimistic though, especially when the
mall manager came to me with rent decreases as apology for the construction delays.

At the very beginning of building my business, I stored my chair, money box, and
anything else valuable in the back of the game store I used to work in. I put all my
inventory every day into drawers build into the kiosk and locked them away until the
next morning. As things got bigger and better, I started wrapping both kiosks in a large
tarp that zipped together. A man from the massage parlor nearby would come out every day
to help me put my tarp away, and every evening he came out to help me put the tarp
back up. He spoke no English at all, only Mandarin Chinese... and so we communicated
through Google Translate. He was a really kind man, and would sometimes bring me
food to try that he had cooked. He was an excellent cook!

In May, I had to say goodbye to the good friend I made from the massage parlor, as he was
transfered to another location. Two days after he left, tragedy struck... and I actually
mark this as the beginning of 'the struggles'. On May 22nd, a string of tornados tore
through the town, and the mall suffered a direct hit. The entire building shook from
the force of the storms, a panel from the roof was slammed through a huge window,
and all the skylights in the hallways were ripped out. My kiosk suffered a direct
hit; I was directly under the skylights. I lost a good 1/3rd of my merchandise to the
rain and flooding that followed.

I ran into the Bath and Body works and took shelter with them inside their back room
until the tornado itself had passed... then a group of about 3 dozen people came out
of their hiding spots to help me. They helped gather my merchandise and pushed it all
into the Bath and Body works to help prevent more of it from being damaged by the
rain now pouring through the missing skylights.



To say this was a devastating event would be an understatement. I hadn't made it even
6 months as a business, and suddenly everything was snatched away from me.